History of Summer Camps
American overnight and sleepaway camps, as we know them today, have been going strong for over 140 years. The idea of camping was founded on the ideals of providing independence and strong values in youth across the nation through a connection with nature and outdoor environments. With the increase of urban areas and large city-based industries, the first summer camp founders had a mind to get children "back to nature" with a combination of programs designed to build skills and a positive attitude. The Gunnery Camp What most consider the first real summer camp began in 1861 with the Gunnery School for boys in Washington, Connecticut. The headmaster of this school and his wife, Frederick William and Abigail Gunn, organized a trip in the summer with the entire student body. They took a forty-mile walk to the shores of a beach in Milford, CT to practice skills for survival in the outdoors. Frederick, an avid abolitionist and long-time outdoorsman, felt that this trip would help build on the four ideals that he was held to in his school: character, courage, and physical and mental strength. This first camp lasted for two weeks at the Long Island Sound; activities were very indicative of what was to come for organized camping. Time was occupied by sailing and boating, sports, storytelling, fishing, and hiking. Into the 1870s the Gunnery continued this tradition with its students for one semester per year, incorporating its academic studies into the program. To this day its annual trip to Steep Rock Reservation is an honor to the founding ideals of Gunn and his motivations for this first modern camping trip. First boys' camps After the Gunnery, the 1880s saw the rise of provincial and Victorian ideals in American society. Among these beliefs was that, due to the expansion of cities and industrialization, character and skills for boys and young men could be built in a rugged wilderness environment. Masculinity was seen as a trait that could better be fostered in the outdoors, as opposed to the feminine environment of a home or kitchen. For this reason, the first boys' camps to appear were small and private, geared at rich families and their older sons. The midwest and northeast regions of the United States were the most popular places for these early camps, and still contain the oldest and most numerous concentrations of camps in the country. Included in the very first generation of boys' camps were those all located around Squam Lake in New Hampshire; Chocorua, established by Dartmouth College students in 1881 and active until 1888, was the known first. It started with just a single cabin and patient anticipation of boys coming from the cities to get away from the crowded life in New England's most populated areas.http://pbskids.org/wayback/summer/features_summer.html The boys who spent this first summer at Camp Chocorua worked and provided entirely for themselves, with the supervision that was intended to help turn resilient boys into successful men. Camp Chocorua would pave the road for countless other camps to follow. Soon other groups bought their own rustic properties and founded their own boys' camps. In the 1880s only a handful of camps were operating, but by 1900 several hundred camps for boys had appeared on the lakes and rivers of New England and the midwest. Each camp had its own unique values, structure, traditions, and facilities ranging from strict and militaristic to quite loose and primitive. Many early boys' camps had stronger religious affiliations or views than those of modern times. The Young Men's Christian Association founded its first camp in 1885, and the first Jewish camp for boys opened in 1902, followed by several others within the next decade. The Boys Scouts of America eventually condoned overnight camping to its members. Girls and minorities follow suit It took a bit of time for girls and their families to become comfortable with the summer camp experience. The first camp to allow female campers into its clientele was Arey, NY's Camp Arey. The first all-girls' camps (Camp Kehonka and the Wyonegonic Camps) opened in New Hampshire and Maine in 1902 and, much like their early male counterparts, were at first quite expensive and attendees usually were only limited to the upper class. At this time, camping and spending much time outdoors was considered inappropriate for civilized young girls, and the practices of these first girls' camps were at times a scandal to the American public. Camps for lower- and middle-class girls were brought about by the Camp Fire Girls (now Camp Fire USA) and the Girl Scouts of the USA in 1911 and 1912. By 1925, approximately three hundred camps run by the Girl Scouts were present in America.http://www.faqs.org/childhood/So-Th/Summer-Camps.html The idea of overnight camping for young girls took time to catch on, but by the mid-1920s thousands of families were sending their girls away to hundreds of camps, mostly in the Pocono and Adirondack regions at first. Soon girls' and boys' camp founders turned their direction to the southern and western parts of the United States to allow closer camp access to youth across the nation. Due to the very strong prevalence of segregation that still existed in the early days of camping, it was rare or unheard of for most camps to accept children of black, Latino, or other ethnic descent. Camp Atwater, founded in 1921, was one of the first; the vast majority of its clientele and staff remains African-American to this day.